One Year Later

What did you feel upon hearing about the Maguindanao Massacre? How could poetry be written/art be made so that it has value to the event?

Almost a year ago, we at High Chair attempted to make the twelfth issue of our journal a vessel for artistic response to atrocity. At the time, the country was reeling from the assault of the unthinkable turned fact.

In a place where acts of violence find a strong and enduring partnership with impunity, it isn’t easy for something to assume the status of unthinkable, and so when it does, it seems obscene to let it take hold without a struggle. In the case of those who write, the struggle is the task of wording it–unwieldy emotions, paralyzing self-awareness, and overwhelming indicators of irrelevance notwithstanding.